Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time / Msgr. Owen F. Campion
The Sunday Readings
The first section of the Book of Isaiah is the source of the first reading for Mass this weekend. In this reading, the prophet speaks directly to the people for God in the first person.
He employs an image with which his contemporaries would have been familiar, the image of the vineyard. Vineyards filled the land. The prophet described the land of God’s people as a vineyard. The people do not own the vineyard. It belongs to God. Lavish in generosity and care, God fills the vineyard with the choicest vines and tends it.
The author of this section of Isaiah was disappointed with his people. He saw them moving along a path toward destruction.
The people were polluting God’s vineyard. They became wild grapes, sour and bitter, unworthy of being in the beautiful vineyard. They were disloyal to God by being disobeying his law and lax and sullen in their religious observance. Especially troubling the prophet were the leaders of the chosen people who flirted with neighboring pagan states, allowing the paganism of these neighbors to influence them.
St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians provides the second reading this weekend.
Philippi was an important military post in the Roman Empire, located in modern Greece. It was a thoroughly pagan community, probably with a scattering of Christians. Pagans looked upon Christians with disdain, at best. They often saw them as a threat to society because of the Christians’ worship of Christ as the Son of God, calling him “kyrios” (“Lord”), a title that Romans would have only applied to the emperor, and because of their devotion to the Gospel values of love, sacrifice and life with God.
Before very long, this disdain for Christians in the empire erupted into outright persecution.
Understandably, Paul sought to encourage and reassure the Christians in Philippi, admonishing them always to be faithful to God, holy. He exhorted them to never fear opposition or persecution.
St. Matthew’s Gospel is the source of the third reading.
As has been the case in past weeks, the selection for this weekend is a parable told in the context of a discussion between Jesus and priests and Jewish elders. Jesus in the parable refers to a landowner of a vineyard, who of course is God.
Remember the first reading? Vineyards often were used in the Old Testament to describe the nation of Israel.
The landowner, or God, planted a vineyard that belonged to him. The people working in the vineyard merely were tenants. God protected this vineyard by surrounding it with a hedge. He then went on a journey, leaving the tenants with the vineyard.
In due course, the landowner sent servants to collect the yield, but the tenants turned against God. Usurping ownership of the vineyard, the tenants killed the servants. God sent more servants and they were killed in turn. Finally, the Son of God was sent, also to be killed. In response, God drove the tenants from the vineyard.
Reflection
The Church has called us to discipleship during these weeks. It restates this call in these readings.
Ultimately, today’s lesson is not about doom and destruction, although Isaiah and Matthew feature unhappiness and death, and Paul wrote under the dark cloud of religious persecution. The message is nonetheless about salvation and hope.
By disobeying or ignoring God, we bring chaos upon ourselves, as did the tenants in in the Gospel story. We remove ourselves from God’s vineyard by our voluntary sinfulness.
Bad consequences are not final, though. With the help of God’s grace, we may choose to return to be with him. By cooperating with that grace, the righteous show themselves to be worthy to be in God’s vineyard. Sinners are unworthy, but those loyal to God are in the vineyard, as laborers, as disciples.
God accepts us back if we truly repent. He forgives us completely, and we return to the vineyard, there to find life forever. †